Family
by ChelsHarp
Summary: When Hermione visits her grandfather, she discovers a surprising secret linked to his mysterious past. OneShot


A/N: So I've always wanted to write a story about Marius for ages because there are so little of them and then I thought, where does Hermione's magic come from? What if she's actually related to one of the pureblood families? What if she's related to Marius!

It was a lovely thought process  
>read and review!<p>

**Family**

"Hermione, c'mon we're going to be late!" Her father shouted from down the hall as Hermione dressed.

"Coming! Just a minute!" She shouted back rushing to find some appropriate clothing. When she had finally located her jacket, she quickly grabbed her Gryffindor scarf from her wardrobe and ran out the door. She tended not to wear her Gryffindor scarf out recently since there could still be some Voldemort supporters out there who wouldn't particularly welcome magically linked clothing on a muggle street. You could never be too careful. And usually she was, but today she couldn't bring herself to be all that bothered. Besides, she was only visiting her Grandfather.

She had just returned home from the Weasleys, where she had been staying since the battle of Hogwarts. As soon as they had sorted out the most pressing issues that were the result of the aftermath of a war, Ron and Harry accompanied her to Australia in order to retrieve her parents. She was now spending some well-earned quiet time in muggle society with her parents, safe in the knowledge that they had ridden the world of Voldemort.

"Finally!" Her father exclaimed as she hopped in the car and buckled her seat belt.

"Sorry for the delay." She apologised and closed the car door.

Her mother turned from the passenger seat to look at her. "Oh darling, I almost forgot you owned that scarf! Why do you never wear it anymore? You used to never take it off!"

"Well it's really the only scarf we _can_ wear at Hogwarts, so now that I'm home I guess I just want to wear something different." She lied.

"Well, I guess that makes sense then darling."

The car ride to her grandfather's house was a long one, though Hermione didn't particularly mind. She enjoyed car rides now that she didn't often get to use the method of transport. After about an hour's worth of half listening to her parent's conversation and admiring the passing scenery of muggle Britain, they had finally arrived.

It wasn't often that Hermione was able to visit her grandfather. Since she started Hogwarts she was always away, so whenever she was home for break she made an effort to make sure she visited him. He had been quite lonely since Hermione's grandmother, her father's mother, had passed away a few years ago from a sudden heart attack. Her parents did make the effort to try and visit regularly but with the effort of the distance of travel it was sometimes hard to do so.

As they pulled into the driveway she was pleased to see her grandfather out the front gardening. He was surprisingly active for someone who had just turned eighty.

He placed down his spade and brushed the dirt off his clothes when he saw them. "Ah! Here's my favourite granddaughter!" he said as she ran over and gave him a hug.

She laughed, "Grandad, I'm your _only_ granddaughter!"

"Exactly why you're my favourite!" He replied as he pulled out of the hug to look at her. "My how you've grown Herm-" he stopped, his eyes glued to her scarf.

"Hermione, where did you get that scarf?" He asked his voice a low monotone. What was wrong with her scarf? He had never known about Hogwarts. Was her perhaps mistaking it for something else?

"It's a school scarf Grandad, from the boarding school I go to. It's my house scarf." She explained, though this didn't seem to re assure him in the slightest.

"What's your house called?" He asked in the same tone he ad asked his previous question. She didn't see what the harm was in telling him the truth, especially if it would put his mind to rest about the scarf thing. He had obviously mistook it for another scarf or some such thing.

"Gryffindor." She replied. His face darkened.

"Dad, what's wrong? It's only Hermione's school scarf." Her father asked, concerned with his father's rapid change in emotions. Her grandfather looked up from the scarf and looked at her father, pain on his face. At that moment he burst into tears and swiftly made his way into the house, leaving behind three very confused Grangers.

"Did I say something wrong?" She asked her father. She didn't know what she had done. She definitely hadn't meant to offend her grandfather in any way.

"I-I don't think so, honey." Her father said, "Look why don't you go inside and talk to him and find out what the problem is, your mother an I will wait outside."

"Okay." She said and warily walked the garden path leading to the front door. She summoned all of her courage and hesitantly knocked.

"Grandad? It's me. Can you let me in?" She asked. She heard a shuffle of movement inside and the click of the door being unlocked. She turned the handle and slowly pushed the door open.

Inside, her grandfather was walking towards the living room, so she closed the door behind her and followed. Once in the room he sat on the couch and motioned for her to sit in the armchair opposite to him. She did so. Looking upon her grandfather's face she saw a deep sadness, which worried her greatly.

"Hermione, has your father told you anything about my childhood?" He asked, after a long pause. Hermione didn't know what this had to do with anything but she answered the question anyway.

"Well Dad said that you had been raised in an orphanage, since the age of eleven. I don't think he said much about before that." She said. Only now had she realised that there was a huge gap in her knowledge of her grandfather's past. "He said you turned up at the orphanage with only your name: Marius Granger."

"Yes, I told them that I couldn't remember anything else, and they passed me off as a case of amnesia." He said.

"You _told_ them? You mean you actually can remember your life before you were eleven?" she hesitantly asked.

"Yes." He replied. He looked a little lost for words for a moment. "W-Would you like a cup of tea, darling?" He asked. Hermione was a little confused about the sudden change of subject.

"Um yeah, sure." She replied. He nodded and got up from his seat and went to the kitchen. Hermione didn't know why he had decided to tell her what little he had about his childhood. Why had he told the orphanage he had amnesia, when he could actually remember his past? For that matter, why had he told her about it and then suddenly rushed off?

From her seat in the living room Hermione could see down the hall and into the kitchen where her grandfather was making tea. He seamed to be doing it as slowly as possible, as if drawing out every single act to gain more time from it.

When he finally returned, he placed Hermione's tea in front of her and took a sip of his own. There was a long and awkward pause that was only filled by the sound of each person slurping their tea. He grandfather was the first to break the silence.

"Hermione, I'm a squib."

Hermione was so taken aback by the statement that she nearly chocked on her tea. Maybe she had hear him wrong? "W-What?"

"I'm a squib." He repeated. She certainly hadn't heard him wrong.

"Oh." She uttered, to shocked to form an actual reply.

"That's why I turned up at a orphanage at the age of eleven, with no past. I didn't get my Hogwarts letter. I was disowned."

Hermione was still at a loss for words. He was a squib? She had received her magic from her Grandfather?

"I should probably tell you the whole story." He said, with a chuckle that contained no happiness. "My actual name is Marius Black. Son of Cygnus Black and Violetta Bulstrode, brother to Pollux, Cassiopeia and Dorea."

"Black! I'm a Black?" she exclaimed, unable to keep in her interruption. She was related to people like the Malfoys! And probably every other awful wizarding family in Britain! Mind you, that also meant she was related to Teddy and Andromeda, and had been related to Sirius and Tonks. That did give her some comfort.

A sad look crossed her father's face. "I see they still have their reputation." He said solemnly.

"Well since you're familiar with the Blacks, I wont need to explain why they disowned me for being a squib. My father was furious. Outraged that I would dishonour the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black in such a way. He disowned me, dropped me off at a muggle orphanage and never looked back."

"Oh that's horrible!" Hermione said. How could someone abandon their son like that?

He looked up and gave her a sad smile. "My uncle Phineas visited me and sent me money when he could, but he didn't have much money in the first place, and being just out of Hogwarts, he was too young to think of supporting a young child by himself. He had also been disowned, you see. He had gone around supporting muggle rights.

"So there I was, left to make my way in the muggle world, which I knew nothing about. When they asked me my name I lied and told them it was Granger. The last name of a man I saw on a muggle advertisement. I didn't want to keep the last name Black and have to carry around a reminder of my shame for the rest of my life.  
>"I got used to life as a muggle eventually, but it was hard for me. I was now one of the people I had been taught to hate, relying on the people that I had been taught to hate. Throughout my childhood we had been taught that muggles were evil, mudbloods and squibs abominations. To be thrown into a situation where you realise that <em>you <em>were the enemy, the abomination, turned my life upside down.

"In a way it was good for me though, it made me realise just how awful my family's views really were. I fear that if I had been born magical I would have grown into a horrible person, never realising the error in my ways." There was a pause where he sipped his tea, thinking of something to say. "I met your grandmother when I was twenty, and she changed my life. We got married and I was the happiest man alive, though a year into our marriage she fell pregnant with your father.

"I had never wanted to have children. I couldn't bear the thought of them being magical and having to face that awful word as a muggleborn. I think there was also a part of me that didn't want to see my child go off to Hogwarts and be accepted into the world that had so horribly rejected me.

"Though, to my relief when your father's eleventh birthday came there was no owl. I thought we were safe. I-I had no idea that your father carried the genes! If I had known, I-I would have warned him! No one told me that you go to Hogwarts. But I get's that's the secrecy act, considering you thought I was a muggle.

"I had heard nothing of the magical world for many years and I began to forget about that part of my life all together. I never talked about it and when people asked I could tell them I had suffered amnesia. My life was completely muggle. All up until one day in 1981. You had just been born, I think. That day I swear every owl took to the sky and wizards were everywhere not even caring that they were wearing robes on muggle streets. All the muggles thought everything was a bit odd but they were none the wiser. No one suspected anything. Except me. I confronted a young wizard and asked what all the ruckus was about, explaining that I was a squib. He told me that a dark wizard had been killed, I can't remember his name, Vold- Voldemere?"

"Voldemort." I said, cringing at the name.

"Yes, him. Anyway, he said that an infant had killed him! A killing curse backfired apparently. That did make me quite happy, I have to say, though I couldn't quite stop myself from wondering about how my family must have felt about this. It was no secret that my family was into dark magic, and I had no doubt that they had probably been supporters of this Voldemort character." He stopped to take another sip of his tea. "Tell me Hermione, it's not hard for you is it? I know how muggleborns were treated back in my day, and I really hate to think that that's happening to you." He said.

"No Grandad, it's fine. Now."

"Now?"

"Yes well…" She trailed off, wondering if she should tell him that it had, in fact been bad at some points but that didn't matter because the good points outweighed them all. "The boy who killed Voldemort is one of my best friends. After Voldemort's disappearance prejudice against muggleborns went down severely. There was still the odd Slytherin about that would call me a "mudblood" in the hallways, but apart from that everything was fine. That was until I was about fourteen, when Voldemort returned. From then on it got progressively worse. Voldemort gained more and more supporters until it got to a point when I couldn't return to school, for my seventh year." She paused. "You know how Mum and Dad went on a holiday to Australia?"

"Well yes."

"That trip was so spontaneously planned because it _wasn't _planned. I had to _obliviate_ their memories of me and send them to Australia so that they wouldn't be drawn into the war. You see because I was friends with Harry Potter, the boy who originally defeated Voldemort, I was at risk. Harry was the only person who could defeat Voldemort again. So Harry, my friend Ron and I all didn't return to school last year and instead looked for ways to- ah- destroy Voldemort. But we did it. We managed it, and he's gone for good. Muggleborns are safe now." She said.

Her grandfather looked distraught. "I'm sorry I put you through that."

"No! Grandad it wasn't your fault! And besides, I'm glad I'm magical. Even though all these bad things have happened, I've had _so_ much joy in the magical world as well. I've made great friends and go to a brilliant school where I learn brilliant things! Trust me, I in no way regret that I am magical, in fact, it's the best thing that ever happened to me."

Her grandfather visibly relaxed after he heard this. Though she could tell there was still something on his mind. "What happened to them? My family, I mean." He asked.

"The house of Black died out two years ago when the last male heir, Sirius II, died childless." She explained to him.

"Oh." He said. "Well, I guess it was bound to happen, they were running out of people to marry by the time they disowned me."

"I'm glad your happy, Hermione." He said and reached over the coffee table to squeeze her hand. "That's all that really matters."

"Thanks Grandad."

"Well you better let your parents in. They're probably outside wondering what on earth we're talking about." He chuckled, and leaned back on the couch, the weight of such a secret off his back.

In the car ride home Hermione would reflect that, even though her surname _should_ be Black, she was proud to be a Granger.


End file.
